POTTSTOWN — The Conshohocken engineering firm hired by the borough to suggest ways to make the codes department more efficient has caused delays and may cost borough taxpayers “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in cost overruns at the Barth Elementary School construction project, school officials said last week.

A call to Remington, Vernick and Beach Engineers seeking comment Monday was not returned before press time.

During the past several school board meetings, the district’s architect, construction managers and administration officials have made references to delays in getting the Barth Elementary School renovation project started.

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Those delays, they said, have been due to requests and requirements made by Remington, Vernick and Beach.

School district Business Manager Linda Adams said the work at Barth was already supposed to be under way, but only some of the work has begun because the district has not been able to get all the permits it needs from the borough. Adams quickly added that is not due to the codes employees but to the requirements from Remington, the firm in charge of issuing the permits.

“They told us we needed to get a variance from Labor and Industry and so we applied and the L & I people said ‘Why are you doing this? You don’t need this’,” Adams recalled.

Adams also said the firm is insisting the district needs to completely replace the fire alarms in all four elementary schools even though only one — Rupert — is having enough work done to require it.

“That’s $100,000 per school. We pointed out to them that the code says we should be exempt for all the schools except Rupert, but they don’t want to hear it,” Adams said.

“The extra work they are requiring us to do, and our architects to do, is causing us delays and money,” she said.

Barry Angstadt, the district’s facilities director, said the project is already 60 days behind schedule because of the delays.

“We’ve been able to get some phased permits and we’re hoping to have the first phase done by October,” he said. “The hope is we’ll have the next phase soon and we can catch-up.”

School Board Vice President Robert Hartman Jr. is a veteran of school construction projects, having served on the school board during the construction and expansion projects at the middle school and high schools, as well as being the longtime chairman of the board’s facilities committee.

His father, Robert Hartman Sr., has worked in the borough’s public works department for more than 50 years and, when asked if the process this time around seems easier or harder than the last construction project, he hesitated for a moment and said “honestly, it’s worse.”

During the Oct. 18 board meeting, Ryan T. Brennan, a project manager with Reynolds Construction Management, told the board that the delay caused by Remington’s additional requests had a ripple effect, meaning that a crucial PECO connection now cannot be made until over the Thanksgiving break.

“We didn’t have the permits we needed in the summer time like we had planned, so we were not able to do the PECO work then, when the students are out of school, so now we have to wait until Thanksgiving,” Brennan said.

So concerned are school officials about the delays and extra requirements, that they are already planning ways to make up for potential delays when work begins next summer on Lincoln, Franklin and Rupert elementary schools.

Further, the decision made last week to move all students and staff out of Rupert and into Edgewood, which will be empty next year, was justified partly by the rationale that if permit delays slow down work at Lincoln and Franklin, it will be easier for the contractors to transfer workers to Rupert which, because it is empty, will presumably have enough work to keep them busy while the paperwork gets done.

Earlier this month, borough council acted on the recommendation of acting borough manager Mark Flanders and hired Remington, Vernick and Beach to conduct a 10-week review of the borough codes department and benchmark the department and make recommendations for best management practices that would be issued in a written report.

The cost of the study is “not to exceed” $33,000, money that is not included in the 2012 borough budget.